


Memory

by etoiledunord



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Borgesian AU, M/M, Metaphysics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-20
Updated: 2009-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etoiledunord/pseuds/etoiledunord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After escaping Candice, amnesiac!Sylar runs into Mohinder in Buenos Aires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the mylar_fic spring 2009 exhange on Livejournal. Recipient is aurilly, who requested a post-V1 fic where Mohinder takes care of Sylar, who suffers from amnesia.
> 
> This piece borrows/steals heavily from the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges. Please keep in mind that his works tend towards the metaphysical. I apologize if anybody is confused.

Mohinder was bitter as he put away his notes at the end of the presentation. He was carefully avoiding the looks of the few stragglers left at the back of the room; despite his limited proficiency with the Spanish language, he was certain they weren’t saying complementary things about him. They didn’t matter in any case. The people he was trying to attract had, yet again, been conspicuously absent from his latest lecture.

“Doctor Suresh?” asked a distinctly North American voice.

Mohinder looked up, then froze.

“My name is Gabriel,” said the figure in front of him.

And indeed it was.

The man staring back at Mohinder—dressed in dusty slacks, sandals, and a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up—looked every bit as harmless as an introverted watchmaker would. Suspicion flashed; it had to be a ruse. Despite the February heat, Mohinder’s heart suddenly turned to ice. “What do you want?” he demanded with a scowl.

“I saw a flyer,” Sylar said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time to hear your lecture. I was hoping I could talk to you.”

The glare Mohinder shot him didn’t seem to change Gabriel’s demeanour. “Ok, then, talk,” he challenged.

This time, Gabriel did falter. “Uh, would you mind if we went somewhere a little more private? I honestly don’t know how this is going to turn out, and I’d rather there not be so many people around.”

“That probably is for the best,” Mohinder replied tersely. “Follow me.”

He picked up his bag and lead the way out of the room and down the hall to an empty classroom. He held the door for the other man as they entered, then closed it sharply, standing in such a way that he blocked the exit, before turning to speak.

“What are you doing here, Sylar?” he asked, titling his chin up in a challenge.

Gabriel’s eyes went wide. “Sylar?” he echoed. “Where did you learn that name?”

It was with a jolt of confusion that Mohinder realized that Sylar looked terrified.

“Who _are_ you?” Gabriel asked.

~~~

The air in Uqbar should have been desert-dry, but, here, the ocean breeze blew humid tendrils through Mohinder’s thoughts. He walked quickly back to his hotel, Gabriel at his side. They passed by a series of cafes and some pigeons pecking at a discarded fig. The sun threw their reflections onto the pavement, identical and black against the cobblestone. They turned off of the Avenida de Mayo onto Florida Street and kept going.

~~~

“I’m confused,” Mohinder said, sitting in the chair opposite Gabriel at the table in the little work nook of his hotel room. “If you weren’t being harmed, why did you run away from Candice? Why not stay to find out what you couldn't remember? She'd already told you about the name Sylar...”

Gabriel paused a moment before answering. “It felt like what I was supposed to do,” he replied.

“And why head south?”

“I was lost,” Gabriel said with a laugh. “And by the time I realized that I was heading away from home instead of towards it, I knew that going somewhere so obvious probably wasn’t a good idea. Crossing the Panama Canal, I decided to never go back.”

Mohinder gave a grim smile. “That’s probably in everybody’s interest.”

There was silence as each man contemplated.

“So what now?” Gabriel asked. “Will _you_ tell me what’s been going on for the past ten months? Do you know how I got stabbed?”

“Gabriel,” Mohinder started, “the events of the past ten months are... complicated. For now, I think we should take things slowly. I’d like to learn more about your abilities, and I’ll explain to you what I can along the way.”

There was a shadow of apprehension in Gabriel’s expression, but he replied “Okay.”

~~~

“When I was twelve years old, I went through a growth spurt. I grew six inches in ten months. I outgrew all of my clothes, and my parents couldn’t afford to replace them all at once. You can guess how much that helped with my popularity. Every time I sat down, three inches of my lower legs were put on display. One day in English class, I stretched and ripped my shirt at the shoulder. My mom was angry with me for that, too. Hmm...

“And there was this girl, Jennifer Holmes. Most popular girl in school. She had long curly brown hair. I sat behind her in math class and spent a lot of time trying to see around it to look at the chalkboard. But after my growth spurt, I was finally taller than her, and I didn’t have to make an idiot of myself to take notes. One day, she asked to borrow a pencil from me, and, when she turned around, she did a little double-take at my height. She blushed. She was so much... bigger than me, I guess, in every way except physically, that it felt kind of nice to have her notice me like that, to startle like she hadn’t realized...”

As they sat outside with their bottles of water, Gabriel reminiscing, Mohinder’s attention was diverted by something glinting at his feet. He reached over to pick it up; it was a small stone—purple and gold, oddly enough—polished smooth. There was a stylized S engraved on one side. It reminded him of a stone he’d found while on vacation in Greece after finishing his Masters degree. He and the two friends who’d been with him were skipping stones out into the ocean. He’d kept that stone, put it in his pocket, but it had gotten lost somewhere in the years. Mohinder slipped this one into his bag.

~~~

Mohinder was woken up by the sound of his phone vibrating against the bedside table. He glanced at the call display—Bennet—and flipped it open.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Bennet replied. “Why would anything be wrong?”

Mohinder paused to get his bearings. Now that he thought about it, he realized it was light outside—for a moment, he’d thought he’d been disturbed in the middle of the night by some emergency. “I thought it was still night, sorry,” he muttered.

“Well, it’s 2am where I am,” Bennet said. “This is the only time I could be sure I had privacy. Isn’t it daytime in Padova, though? I thought you were going to head there early.”

“I was, but I changed my mind. I’m still in Buenos Aires.”

“Why? Did you find somebody from the Company?” Bennet asked.

Mohinder hesitated. “No... I found Sylar.”

“Sylar?!” Bennet exclaimed. “Sylar’s supposed to be dead.”

“I know,” Mohinder said, wincing, and he glanced at Gabriel, still asleep in the other bed of the new hotel room they’d been sharing for the past four days. “He doesn’t remember anything of the past ten months. He woke up at a facility in Mexico that was probably run by the Company, and he ran. He saw a poster advertising my lecture and found me by chance.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Are you sure he’s not faking? He’s an excellent actor, Mohinder, when he needs to be, and-”

“I’m sure.”

“Absolutely?”

“Yes,” Mohinder said. “I’ve got it under control, Bennet. Trust me. His powers frighten him more than anything. And nothing else happened at my last lecture. They all thought I was a quack, just like everybody has. I’ll talk to you when I’m done in Padova.”

Bennet sighed. “Alright.”

Mohinder closed his phone and put it back on the bedside table. He yawned and ran a hand over his face. He was considering getting out of bed—7am was as good a time as any—when he heard a noise from beside him.

Gabriel was mumbling in his sleep. As Mohinder watched, he saw the man’s hand twitch at his side, then his brow furrow in an odd expression. Not worry or concern, but almost as if-

“Oh!” Gabriel gasped as he awoke suddenly.

Mohinder sat up. “Are you alright?” he asked.

“I... I had a dream,” came the breathless reply. “About myself... About Sylar.”

“Sylar?” Mohinder echoed. “Do you remember anything?”

“I don’t know. There were two men. You were there. Something was very wrong.” Gabriel’s gaze was far away as he spoke.

Mohinder thought quickly. “Nothing like that happened before,” he said. “It was just a dream.”

Gabriel took a deep breath. “That's what I thought.”

~~~

Gabriel had no recollection of trying to kill himself. He didn’t remember the dagger, the conceit.

~~~

It was a little after ten in the evening, and Mohinder and Gabriel were walking back from dinner. The breeze was pleasant as the heat of the day wore off. The sun had set, but the lights of the city and the animated pedestrians kept the atmosphere lively and upbeat.

“I would have liked to work with others to learn more about your abilities,” Mohinder was telling Gabriel, “but the opportunity never came up. There were so many things happening so quickly that nobody had much of a chance to even catch their breath, let alone devote large amounts of time to non-essential efforts. Though, I suppose, if I’m successful at attracting the attention of the people who were holding you, I might be able to learn a great deal. I might even be able to help you get rid of your abilities entirely. I know your eidetic memory especially bothers you, though I would beg you to reconsider on that point—you never know when something like that will-”

“Good evening, Dr. Suresh.”

They both stopped. Standing a few yards ahead of them were two men.

“Bennet!” Mohinder exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“This isn’t safe,” Bennet replied. “I’ve come to take him down quietly, so that nobody else gets hurt.”

Beside him, Mohinder recognized the Haitian, there for ‘protection,’ he assumed. He didn’t seem as imposing as normal, though. In fact, he looked almost distracted, fiddling with something in his hand. Under the streetlight, Mohinder recognized the stone he’d found. The stone that was still in his bag—he’d played with it after he’d finished eating his dinner, before they’d left the restaurant.

“Mohinder,” Gabriel said, distracting him from his perplexed wonderings. Glancing sideways, he saw that Gabriel was staring intently at Bennet.

“It’s alright,” Mohinder said, though he wasn’t sure he believed it. “There’s just been a misunderstanding.”

“No... This is my dream.”

That caught Mohinder off-guard.

“I can’t use my abilities—that’s what was wrong. But it’s ok,” he said, advancing on the other men.

“Gabriel, this-”

“Sylar,” he interrupted, addressing Bennet. “You want Sylar.”

Bennet arched an eyebrow. “That’s right,” he replied.

“Gabriel!” Mohinder tried again.

“It’s ok, Mohinder,” he assured. “I understand now. This is what I wanted. When I was being held by Candice, when I crossed the Panama Canal, when I killed Brian Davis and your father and all the others... This fight. No powers, just you and me and our opponents. This is what Gabriel Gray was trying to realize.”


End file.
